Pretty easy A. Every week, you have to do a short multiple choice canvas quiz to show that you did the reading and attended the lecture. It's open note, so pretty easy. Took no more than 10 minutes each week. The readings are pretty short too. No more than like 15 pages per week. You also have to do about 5 "major/minor assignments" throughout the quarter. You have to practice gathering your own linguistic data, transcribing it, analyzing it using different softwares, etc.. But the assignments are spread out over the quarter, so the workload isn't that heavy. There's no final exam. Instead, there's a final paper where you write up the results of your research (i.e. the stuff you did for the assignments throughout the quarter). Professor Tao doesn't make participation mandatory, but he really appreciates it when you answer questions in class/make comments. I will say that if you are always actively participating in class, and then you need an extension for a canvas quiz or two (i.e. you forgot to do it the night before class), then he will be happy to help you.